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domingo, 30 de octubre de 2016

A new sprite series

Decent
start for a new animator

The
41th installment of Bad Animations dealt with the pilot episode of “A New Day”,
the first series of the newcomer animator by sprites Destrayter. “BA New Day”
encouraged me to try more of these commentaries even if they used to be the
content I like making the least. But it’s still my most shared Spanish content,
even more than “Aitor Molina Vs.” and I receive suggestions that I would love
to fulfill if they don’t offer enough material to write a script.

Sometimes
I am the one who finds interesting stuff to comment and noting it has became a
huge part of me, since I’ve been doing this for five years. It’s the oldest
show by me you can entirely find online, ordered and linked in its own tab of
my blog. If those videos disappear from Dailymotion, tell me to reupload.

I
should point that my criteria has changed since I started Bad Animations
because there weren’t that many sprite-series. Which six years ago was a great
video, nowadays is regular and repetitive. By sprites, you could find
interesting fan-fiction mixing videogames and animes, today you need actually
creating.

Since
you can point a real effort to make sprites, it is half way to be something
well-directed. The designs will probably improve after three or five episodes,
like some of the mugshots and the title card. It distracts a lot trying to fit
characters with a little effort alongside simple recolors. Specially because
the pictures of the text-boxes just change the hair colors like a bootleg
Donald Duck mask.

Half way to great stuff

Inspired
by FlashEstudio, A New Day is a decent start for an animator and a good step to
improve the sprite genre. But it shares the same problems from its predecessors
like using gratuitous anime songs as openings instead of obscurer music that
could be associated with this series. It distracts even more when the title of
the song is on-screen and reveals where it’s from.

Other
blatancies include, instead of shoehorning videogame characters like most of
the sprites do, putting them on the intro justified as an “in-universe
spin-off”. That’s even worse than the stolen robot designs from Oscar’s
Nightmares from Hell! Having cameos from famous characters on TV like
easter-eggs is ok, but giving them screentime when they are irrelevant to the
plot doesn’t make any sense outside of pandering to the viewership you are
trying to avoid.

So
we have a confusing but interesting approach which takes inspiration from
videogame-themed visual marvels like Scott Pilgrim. The first view doesn’t
clear if they are inside a videogame or the universe is just bizarre since they
have life-bar and magic unicorns.

Then,
we have a too simple plot with the main character having to buy milk, reuniting
with his one-dimensional friends and fight a random monster. It’s still better
than most of plots and characters in sprite-series, which is sad when the
roster is composed of: the main, her best friend, the black guy, Zurfura the
ghost, Rakzol, the unpowered, the hated, the shy girl, someone’s girlfriend and
the uncharacterized minor of the group who does “cute cajuai” stuff.

Convoluted mess with nonsensical plot

Not
everything has been established, the episode doesn’t really explain who the
characters are outside of their single characteristic. The main, that’s how he
calls himself, meets with his friends to talk modernly without directly falling
into random humor, even if it’s very meme-ish. For example, the annoying brat
says “Nyan Cat Attack” but it’s a regular dash instead of something creative.

Too
many characters to introduce in a single scene too little characterization to
make them interesting. Too meta to be funny and too self-referential to be
creative. The world should be at least more defined before breaking the fourth
wall like Deadpool, who didn’t become a meta icon until many years later.

Jokes
like the black guy or the main character would be funnier in case of being
self-aware, like Rakzol or referencing how crazy a six-armed monster is. Too
many mixed styles like Pikeyo and Scott Pilgrim makes a better John Show with
the newest bad episodes of Nightmares from Hell.

The
mixture of character-styles could be used for comedy like Gumball, which would
be unique for a FlashEstudio animation. On the other hand, expies are properly
used, like the ridiculous characters from One Punch Man. The derivative
characters are hidden enough, at least not physically. It’s the most
interesting new sprite-series from 2016.

It’s
also mentionable that the first animation ever from the creator can be longer
than ten minutes, because animators need years to achieve that. The ghost girl
Zurfura is amazing because is not as one-dimensional and derivative, even her
name sounds like a Norse god!

A half-baked parody

A
New Day mostly lacks a bit of self-parody, I think that a Gag Dub like Digimon
Abridged by GilZab or Friendzone Team would help a lot, or a humorous
script-rewrite like Leslie Nielsen’s movies or Cuzco. Even the sprites wouldn’t
be needed to change if the vague designs are acknowledged.

Crazy
interfaces like life-bars made it difficult to get, but at least interests
enough to tie-in a bit with the Revengeverse, at least with the ghost. The
avatars could evolve into being represented by the drawings themselves instead
of the recolored sprites.

I
hope there is enough fanart for the second episode to make it more visual and
getting to other stuff that could work or not. Even the title card style would
be an improvement over how lazy the non-ghost designs look!